The recent riots in the UK, marked by a surge of white nationalist violence and targeted attacks on minority communities, are a stark warning of how quickly societal fault lines can fracture into chaos.
In the end, Mr Fumio Kishida could not escape the pull of gravity. Japan’s ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) will elect its new leader late in September and, in recent weeks, the momentum in Tokyo had been swinging one way: that the unpopular but famously stubborn Mr Kishida would run, and win, as potential successors demurred and bided their time for a better opportunity.